MODERN education should expand emotional intelligence (EQ). Without EQ development, the person is half educated. This new challenging century demands colleges and business schools to review their programs and to propel EQ at the forefront of business education. Mauritius has seen a proliferation of business schools. What type of curricula are these schools advocating? This paper presents and critically examines the implementation of teaching methods to promote EQ. It explores the nature of EQ and details the educational methods used to develop students? abilities in perceiving and using emotions, through to becoming critical and reflective individuals. It argues that it is necessary to implement a range of teaching styles if EQ is to be advanced. The following methods are discussed: forum theatre, self inquiry, narrative and reflective practice. How do these methods encourage EQ development? Should all professional education have EQ themes in the curricula? Are the business schools in Mauritius developing EQ? What are the modern trends in education?

The aim of this paper is to encourage business schools to engage in a modern, contemporary and dynamic EQ development program to energise our young businessmen for the sake of our country.

Professional Education

The idea of EQ has been popularised by Daniel Goleman in his book 'Emotional Intelligence'. The term was originated by Mayer and Salovey whose research in the 1980's concluded with their findings that EQ is an actual intelligence (Mayer et al. 1999). They propose that EQ comprises the perception, identification, assimilation, using and understanding of emotions. Goleman (1996) argues that EQ contains a range of emotional skills and personality traits namely, self awareness, self management, social awareness and social skills. Underpinning Goleman?s work is the concept of multiple intelligences as espoused by Gardner (1983). Gardener challenges the domination of measuring success through I.Q. and proposes seven varieties of intelligence (see Table 1).

Educational programmes that stimulate and promote EQ as well as critical and reflective thinking should be the aim of professional education. The intention must be to provide a challenging route that not only stretches the students? intellect, but also their EQ. Professional developers seek to provide a creative and stimulating education that causes students to question their beliefs and values, stimulates personal growth, promotes empathic understanding and challenges the power base of education itself by involving social and business institutions in every aspect of the programme. More than anything else educators must develop a brand of education that is totally relevant to the needs of the contemporary world. Professional development endorse the ethos of the Capable Person in terms of the skills, knowledge and attitude needed for survival and optimum performance; however professional education places a greater emphasis upon self-awareness, and human compassion underpinning the development of specific skills. Thus education should adopt the concept of the ?Capable Person? to develop exciting, pertinent and germane educational and professional development programmes.

Forum Theatre

The metaphor of theatre in relation to society has been developed through role theory (e.g. Biddle and Thomas 1966). We all play a role. In the hospital practice setting the professional plays the part of nurses and, finally, the service-users are the patients. The scene is set. Society expects us all to play our parts, actors upon the stage of life, fulfilling our socially expected roles. Rather than ignore this drama so critical to our development, teachers must acknowledge it, embrace it and deliberately act their parts.

An example of how drama might be used is the implementation of forum theatre in the classroom (Boal 1992). A student is invited to relate a critical incident from practice, or indeed imagine an anticipated scenario e.g. "starting a new placement on Monday". This does not have to be a particularly complex situation, but one where the student thinks that it could have been handled differently. If group size allows, all the students are invited to participate in the exercise. The person who is relating the story becomes the director.

The teacher retains the role of facilitator throughout the session. Each student is allocated a part in the "play". The group acts out the scene as described by the director. Anybody has the right to freeze the action at any time especially if they feel distressed or disturbed by the proceedings. The director will encourage the actors to stick to the recalled or anticipated events although improvisation is essential and, at times, extremely effective. During the ?frozen? moments the facilitator may intervene in order to stimulate thinking, feeling and discussion.

It is remarkable that once the students are involved in the process, they usually fully engage with the method. Students apparently enjoy the process and are quick to speak out about what is good or otherwise in relation to the scene or role they play.

When students freeze the action and request some kind of change, the facilitator will ask how the change has affected their roles. It is normal to swap roles so that every student gets a sense of what it is like to experience the role of the other, (Jennings 1989; Leverton 1977). The process allows the participants to offer their own opinions as to how conflicts could be resolved or to listen to solutions offered by other members of the audience. If there are too many students for the exercise then they will become observers and take it in turns to step outside of the action and offer feedback about the experience.

Forum theatre facilitates active learning because it engages the imagination, stimulates emotions, stimulates right brain activity, provides a safe context for exploring alternative actions and interventions, offers a fresh perspective on problems, provides a framework to facilitate change, explores a range of possible outcomes, and helps individuals to resolve unresolved feelings and thoughts (Jennings 1989). The concept of using drama in education is consistent with the humanistic and person-centred philosophy of Carl Rogers (Rogers 1994). By facilitating the use of drama in the classroom, the teacher temporarily lays aside the didactic power position and gives control to the creative energy of the student. The session is able to venture into uncharted waters and follow the path of the students? experience and subsequent reflection. As a facilitator, the teacher follows this path whilst maintaining safe boundaries. The use of drama in education promotes personal development, self-awareness and potentially, professional efficacy (Boal 1992).

Self inquiry

Any notion of separating ourselves into professional and personal is delusional and only feasible in relation to behaviour; i.e. it may not be within professional boundaries to socialise with my clients; I have a "duty of care" to my client, but not towards the man in the street. Similarly, the idea of developing a professional practice whilst attempting to hide the personal under the aura of professionalism is unrealistic. Barker et al. (1999) have argued for the "engineered" persona which is presented to clients, however this engineering is evident in any social situation. We are also human beings with all of our life experiences, hurts, joys, prejudices and fears. Along with our clients we carry scars, wounds, disappointments, happiness and hopes and dreams for the future. We are people first, being a nurse is a role we act. We accept therefore that each of us bring our individual humanity into the classroom and into the practice area. This is modelled in the classroom by teachers feeling and demonstrating compassion for the students. Students are encouraged to listen to one another and develop compassion and empathic understanding towards one another. Thus, reflective group teaching is very useful in professional and business studies.

Narrative

The use of narrative is valuable as a reflective tool (Rolfe et al. 2001), a therapy (Freedman and Combs 1996) and as a research method (Ellis and Bochner 2000). Through storytelling, people can connect and interpret events in a way that is meaningful to the narrator, and enjoy something of a shared truth. Storytelling acts as a testimony that certain events happened, and happened according to the narrator. The practice of storytelling is primitive and pre-dates written language. Narrative is instinctual and essential for successful human communication. Professional developers and coaches should encourage students to tell their stories. The telling of the individual narrative gives the student the opportunity to become better known, listened to and validated by the group. There is emphasis on the importance of colleague?s narrative. Business schools teaching just core subjects such as pure accounting without EQ development do no service to professionals. Creative and challenging method such as story telling help to ground pure dry subject into the reality of work and client management.

Reflective practice

This encourages the student to develop evidence of practice that draws together issues of theory/ practice and research. More important, the use of a portfolio allows students to express issues/situations/incidents experienced in practice in a dynamic and reflective manner. These processes facilitate the development of self awareness and are arguably at the centre of our professional world. We require the students to keep a personal journal. Whilst on placement, students come into school one day per week in order to have group supervision that is facilitated by the teacher. There is a "check in" time where students and teacher briefly share the highlights or low points of their week since they last met. The bulk of the remaining time will be taken up with a presentation by one of the students followed by discussion. The discussion can take any form. Sometimes there may be a debate (usually with the group divided and assuming roles from the real life drama). At times, especially when the student feels stuck in any situation on placement, the supervision will be given over to a session of forum theatre. At times vulnerability is shared in the group, occasionally there are tears. Students are encouraged to process these emotions within the classroom and find support from their peers. The teacher is required to maintain therapeutic holding of the group and be astutely aware of the emotional needs of each group member. Following such sessions the students will be encouraged to record their experiences and learning.

Practising listening skills

In order to teach listening skills we adopt a very simple and non-technical approach. The basic listening skills are widely identified in the counselling, human relation and professional development arena. The skills are taught in a series of scheduled sessions. The core skills are: non-verbal communication, open questions, clarifying, reflecting content, reflecting feeling, summarising and the use of silence. Each of the skills is firstly demonstrated and discussed. Students are provided with practical examples, and then have an opportunity to practice the skills in role-play situations. Group process time is included before, during, and at the end of each of the sessions in order to ensure students understand what is being practised and adequate and appropriate support is given. For the rest of the week students are in practice placements and are encouraged to practice these interpersonal skills under the supervision of a mentor. Each week students return to the sessions and share their experience of practising the skills with the group and reflect on their successes and areas for improvement.

Conclusion

Professional practice is becoming more emotionally and technically determined. Function and human contact are merging. Business is carried in a human milieu and self-knowledge is critical for success. What employers and clients want are professionals that can demonstrate human qualities of acceptance, technical know-how and empathy. By providing an education that seeks to develop EQ we are, on the one hand, making high demands upon our students, but we are attempting to help students to develop as mature, self-aware, empathic and sensitive practitioners. In order for this to be successful it is critical that appropriate role-modelling and support is in place to facilitate the development of EQ. We cannot expect our students to be critical, empathic and reflective if we do not demonstrate these qualities in our teaching. What is proposed here in this article therefore is also demanding upon professional facilitators in terms of curriculum design and teaching methods. Will our businesss schools rise to the challenge?

Dr Taleb DURGAHEE